Contact Us

www.realfoodchain.wordpress.com/contact-us/

Jon Moore's World Organic News.

Rich Bowden's Rich Bowden Writing

Mel's links and suggestions:

Emu Wellness Facebook Page

Recommended site by Melinda: Dr Axe -- (excellent information and graphics)

Recommended author by Melinda: Dr David Perlmutter. Books available here.

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Welcome to episode 3 of The Real Food Chain podcast!

This month our program is based on a fascinating interview The Real Food Chain's co-host Jon Moore conducted with Melinda Blundell, owner of Emu Wellness, a holistic lifestyle training company based in the Lower Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, Australia. Mel's a functional nutritionist, presenter and wellness advocate and has spent the last five years teaching people the benefits of wholefoods and balanced gut health after making dietary changes that completely eliminated her own physical and mental symptoms.

In the interview, Mel talks about such issues as the relevance of gut health to mental and physical health, as well as the destructive effect on good gut bacteria caused by antibiotics and the Western diet (think processed food!). She describes the way science has now confirmed that our gut biota can determine, not just our health, but moods and can even help reduce depression. Mel uses her own experience to show how people's health and lives can be changed by a more holistic, gut biota-focused diet.

"We're not just what we eat, we are what we absorb," -- Melinda Blundell.

Interested in finding out more about gut health? Why not register for one of Mel's gut health workshops? More details here.

Now sit back and enjoy episode three of The Real Food Chain's podcast.

Emu Wellness Facebook Page

Recommended site by Melinda: Dr Axe -- (excellent information and graphics)

Recommended author by Melinda: Dr David Perlmutter. Books available here.

Jon Moore's World Organic News.

Rich Bowden's Rich Bowden Writing

Contact Us

www.realfoodchain.wordpress.com/contact-us/

Hello and welcome to episode two of the Real Food Chain podcast! I’m Jon and we’ll hear from my co-host Rich later in the show.

This month’s focus is urban farming here in sunny Australia. Rich will be talking with Margaret Paton about her experiences growing food in her Blayney backyard using permaculture principles.

Before that let’s have a deeper look at urban farming.

This system of food production has much to recommend it. Food miles are reduced to zero. This strips all the green house gasses out of transport. If you also urban farm organically, and I’ll assume we’re all on that page, then you’re building soil carbon. Pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and holding it in the soil, where it belongs. You are also not adding to the demand for poisons to be sprayed on your food. Basically a win, win, win situation!

In the upcoming interview Margaret talks about an extremely small garden which was her inspiration. This is worth bearing in mind. The amount of food we can grow in a small space is quite astonishing. Most of us have seen commercial market gardens and they are spread out affairs. Looking more closely we see this is not for the benefit of the plants but to allow tractor access for spraying of artificial fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides. If we grow in spaces better suited to humans and plants we can stack the plants quite closely. This has the advantage of shading out weeds, reducing water loss through evaporation and wildly increasing productivity.

Another benefit from small scale urban farming is the harvesting method. Instead of removing the whole lettuce to ship it off to a market, we can pick the outer leaves as we need them, allowing the lettuce to continue to grow. This maintains ground cover and means we don’t need to eat a whole lettuce before it goes off. You will notice flavour changes over the growing season but these are not off putting. I’ve done this and four lettuce, some silverbeet and a patch of rocket I trimmed in sections weekly kept four people in salad greens for seven months.

There is, as I’ve said much to recommend urban farming. Much to recommend permaculture too but I’ll let Margaret tell her take on that philosophy.

So here is Margaret Paton with co-host Rich.

Margaret's Interview here.

I hope that’s got you thinking. 10% of your food sounds like a good first target to aim for. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this. You reach us through the contact page on the website at www.realfoodchain.wordpress.com/contact-us/ which is also in the show notes.

Equally if you think you’d make a great guest or know someone else who would contact us at the same page. We’d love to hear from you.

Next month we plan to look at gut health and what we can make and do for ourselves to support this part of our health.

Until then, goodbye.

Links:

The Real Food Chain

The Real Food Chain Facebook Page

The Real Food Chain Twitter Page

World Organic News (Jon’s site)

Michael Pollan interviewed by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman

The first podcast for The Real Food Chain gave us — co-hosts Rich Bowden and Jon Moore — a chance to say hello and discuss our aims for this new Oz-themed wholefoods show.

We chatted about how wholefoods is really a return to the past of food production. We explore how organic food is not a new concept at all, but a return to the ways our grandparents farmed and ate real food — sans chemicals.

In the second half of the show, you can hear me (Rich) talk about who we are aiming at reaching with the website and podcast. The answer is it’s ordinary people, like us. Those of you who are interested in organic foods for health foods but may not be able to afford the premium that organic grocers attract. Or perhaps you need to change your diet to improve your health for medical reasons. Or you may be a young Mum or Dad looking for the best for your kids’ diet but looking at ways to keep costs down.

I talk about our idea of making The Real Food Chain a reference point for anyone interested in real foods but something more. I want it to have that distinct Aussie accent. Taking inspiration from around the world yes, but keeping it local for Australians. I add that each podcast will be based on a relevant wholefoods topic and Jon and I will be interviewing guests who will give us an insight into organic food.

Topics we’ll be covering in future podcasts:

• Fermenting foods
• Gut health
• Where to find affordable organic food
• Growing your own organic produce
• Cooking with wholefoods
• Breadmaking
• Farmers’ markets
• Heirloom tomatoes
• And much, much more.

Links:

The Real Food Chain

The Real Food Chain Facebook Page

The Real Food Chain Twitter Page

World Organic News (Jon’s site)

Michael Pollan interviewed by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman

Links

Contact us to be part of the show.

Rich, through Rich Bowden Writing has been advocating for Green values for many years. [Click here!]

Jon has written extensively on this subject and has a No-Dig gardening book available on Amazon. [Click here!]

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Welcome to The Real Food Chain podcast!

This is episode zero. A place marker to allow iTunes to find our feed.

So what’s this podcast about?

The Real Food Chain is the work of Rich Bowden and Jon Moore, a pair of idealistic and insufferable reprobates, with a love of (in no particular order); thinking outside the square, organic practice and wholefoods. Coffee’s in there somewhere as well.

We have shared ideas, thoughts and occasionally outlandish visions on wholefoods and organic food growing — and their relevance in today’s society — for over a decade.

We believe strongly that access to organic food should be available to all. Not just those in higher income brackets. Revolutionary huh?

Both of us agree on the need for a return to organic practices to ease dietary problems, boost nutrition, care for our land and farmers and reduce pests and diseases. We are intrigued with the idea of food as medicine, a wholefood diet and organic farming as the basis for great health.

Rich, through Rich Bowden Writing has been advocating for Green values for many years. [Click here!]

Jon has written extensively on this subject and has a No-Dig gardening book available on Amazon. [Click here!]

Links to both sites are in the show links.

Our aim for this podcast is to articulate these points of view through those on the frontline of change. Handy information that folk can use in their daily lives.

We want to create a discussion that gives everyone access to information on organic wholefoods, putting this in an Australian context. That’s why we want to hear from you. If you have a story to tell, from the soil to the plate, drop us a line and we’ll start the ball rolling. A link in the show notes.

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Links

Contact us to be part of the show.

Rich, through Rich Bowden Writing has been advocating for Green values for many years. [Click here!]

Jon has written extensively on this subject and has a No-Dig gardening book available on Amazon. [Click here!]